Oakland Park businesses fight late-night alcohol fee

August 3, 2013|By Larry Barszewski, Sun Sentine

Oakland Park officials thought they had come up with a model for addressing alcohol-related problems: Require businesses selling booze after midnight to pay a hefty annual fee and train employees not to serve minors.

But other municipalities have not lined up behind the four-year-old program and local businesses are complaining Oakland Park's $2,000 annual fee is unreasonable.

"That's a big pill for a lot of business owners and prospective business owners to swallow," said Christopher Brennan, who tends bar at Big Dog Station downtown on Northeast 12th Avenue. "These are not thriving, lucrative businesses. They're up-and-coming and struggling businesses."

Pembroke Pines Mayor Frank Ortis took up the cause in his city a few years ago, but met stiff business opposition. He's now suggesting an annual fee closer to $300 and the local chamber of commerce, which said the higher fee and training would have been burdensome on larger chains as well as mom-and-pop operations, is studying the issue.

"We were finding that for some of our businesses, it was going to cost up to $5,000 to $10,000 [annually]," said Robert Goltz, president of the Miramar-Pembroke Pines Regional Chamber of Commerce. "We're trying to find something that will work for our restaurants."

The idea was simple: Charge businesses to help cover the cost of police needed to handle late-night alcohol-fueled disturbances, and combat underage drinking by requiring employee training – especially for those working at gas stations and convenience stores selling alcohol.

The lackluster response has not deterred Larry Gierer, a former Oakland Park mayor and commissioner who has promoted the idea as a member of the United Way of Broward County Commission on Substance Abuse.

"[Oakland Park] is the only city that's doing something proactively to absorb some of the alcohol costs in the city," Gierer said.

If the fee discourages some establishments from selling alcohol after midnight, that frees up deputies for increased neighborhood patrols, said Broward Sheriff Capt. Al Hubrig, district chief for the city.

While Gierer realizes many restaurants and bars already do some training, he said the comprehensive approach is the only legal way to include service stations and convenience stores that he sees as a major part of the underage drinking problem.

Some cities do charge for extended-hour permits, generally in the hundreds of dollars, but don't include the training component. Gierer plans to take his message next month to commissioners in Fort Lauderdale, where there's no fee for an extended-hours permit, and to the Broward League of Cities.

But he'll also be back in Oakland Park, where Commissioner Jed Shank said the city may have gone too far when it raised the fee from $200 to $2,000 in 2009. Currently, 31 businesses have permits, bringing in $62,000 to the city.

Shank wants to see something more equitable – and he'd like some justification for the size of the fee.

"Staff has not been able to provide me the data to show how the revenue generated by this fee relates to costs incurred by selling alcohol after midnight," Shank said. "I support a hefty fee for after-midnight sales. I think that we just need to make some tweaks to it, particularly for small establishments that also provide food."

Big Dog owner Debbie Blakely said she's not getting much business after midnight these days, but needs to keep her hours consistent to attract customers when the economy rebounds.

"That fee is more than I pay the state every year for my liquor license," Blakely said.

Judy Toner, owner of Granny's, a small 15-seat pub on Northeast 11th Avenue, has been complaining about the fee to commissioners every chance she gets.

"How can they put me in categories with bars that don't have a kitchen and may have 300 seats," Toner said. "They went from $200 to $2,000. You don't think there's something wrong with it?"